For mature beverage categories, producing year-over-year growth can be a challenge. For the U.S. wine and spirits markets, sales growth has allowed these categories to increase not only its own yearly comparisons, but also gain market share from other beverage alcohol categories.
“When you look at [spirits] performance against the other categories, it’s done really well,” said Boris Oglesby, executive vice president and practice leader for Beer, Wine and Spirits at Chicago-based Information Resources Inc. (IRI), in Beverage Industry’s April issue. “In terms of dollar sales, spirits grew in 2017.”